LATEST ADDITIONS

Zbigniew Herbert’s <I>Collected Poems, 1956-1998</I> is good news for those of us who have long admired his poetry. Or so I thought, until I read David Orr's <I>NYT</I> article about the Alissa Valles translations used in the new book.

Born in poverty on the outskirts of Barquisimeto in the Venezuelan interior, Gustavo Dudamel has become what Simon Rattle calls "the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across."

The Grolier Club has mounted an exhibition that takes miniature books bigtime.

Why, in loudspeaker reviews, is impedance measured (assuming that the magazine in question bothers to measure anything)? Generally, for one principal reason only: to establish whether the speaker presents an "easy" or a "difficult" load to its partnering amplifier. In the design context, much more information can be extracted from a graph of speaker impedance vs frequency—such as details of the bass alignment, and indications of internal or structural resonances that can be difficult to identify by acoustical measurements. But for a magazine audience, the principal interest in a loudspeaker's load impedance lies in gaining some indication of its compatibility with a given amplifier.

When audio designer Ken Shindo was a little boy, his father kept an enormous collection of 78rpm records in their home in Tokyo. During the final days of World War II, the Japanese authorities did their best to evacuate the city, but the elder Shindo was steadfast: He refused to leave, for fear that the records would be gone when he returned.

Conrad-Johnson launched the all-tube Premier 7 in 1988 as an all-out sonic assault on the state of the preamplifier art. A great deal has happened since then. For starters, C-J has gotten a great deal of feedback from customers, dealers, and reviewers. None other than <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/66">J. Gordon Holt</A> (<I>Stereophile</I>, November 1988, Vol.11 No.11) concluded that: "It appears that nothing which could possibly have improved its sound had been omitted....It is, in fact, about as close as any tubed preamp has come to being perfectly neutral in sound&mdash;in nearly all respects." In the now-defunct <I>Sounds Like...</I> (issue 3), Sam Burstein concluded that "It is, with certain reservations, absolutely delightful to one's musical senses." And, speaking of absolutes, even Harry Pearson gave the Premier 7 a rave in the first round of his preamplifier survey (<I>TAS</I>, issue 58). As icing on the cake, John Atkinson (<I>Stereophile</I>, Vol.12 No.8) concluded that the 7 had "the requisite degree of sonic magic to make it a Class A recommended preamplifier."

I have a <A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/arts/music/29kapl.html?_r=1&ref=arts&…; story</A> in the Arts & Leisure section of today’s <I>New York Sunday Times</I> about Charles Mingus and Art Pepper—specifically about the happy accident that these two famously self-absorbed jazz legends married women who became equally absorbed in preserving their legacies.